She’d reserved the Hanover Room off the back of the carvery downstairs. Most restaurants in this city were associated with hotels, and the Brighton’s was a very expensive, very exclusive one. As she came through the door, two men rose. One of them was the lawyer, Bates, and the other—she smiled at him and dipped her head briefly. “You must be Sir Alfred Durant?” she asked. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“A pleasure, ma’am,” he said, in a hoarse, slightly gravelly voice. Durant was thin and tall, imposing but with a hauteur that spoke more of a weary self-confidence than of arrogance. His eyes were soft, brown, and deceptively tired-looking. “Please, you must call me Alfred. Mr. Bates has been pinning my ears back with stories about you.”

“Indeed.” Miriam’s expression acquired a slightly fixed, glassy overtone as she nodded to her lawyer. “Well, and have you arrived in good health? Has anyone offered you a drink? I say, waiter—”

The waiter hurried over. “Yes, milady?”

Durant raised an eyebrow. “Gin and tonic for me,” he said slowly—or was it melancholia? He likes people to think he drives from the back seat, Miriam noted. Watch this one.

“A sweet Martini for me,” Bates added. Next to Sir Durant he was short, plump, and somewhat overeager.

“Certainly.” Miriam relaxed slightly. “A sherry, please,” she added. “If you’d like to come in, I believe our table is waiting…?”

The scandalous overtones of a single woman entertaining two gentlemen to dinner in a closed room were mildly defused by her black dress and rumored widowhood. Bates had confirmed that there were no unsalubrious rumors about Sir Durant’s personal life—or at least none she need worry about. Miriam concentrated on being a perfect hostess while pumping Durant for information about himself, and keeping Bates from either drying up or running off at the mouth. Durant was not the most forthcoming of interview subjects, but after the soup she found a worthwhile button to press, and triggered a ten-minute monologue on the topic of car-racing. “It is without doubt the wooden track that makes it so exciting,” Durant droned over the salmon steak—expensively imported by airship from the north—“for with the embankment of the course, and the addition of pneumonic wheels, they get up to the most exhausting speeds. There was the time old Timmy Watson’s brakes failed on the inside straight toward the finish line at Yeovilton—”

After the best part of two hours, both Bates and Sir Durant were reclining in their chairs. Miriam felt bloated and silently cursed the etiquette that prevented her from leaving the table for a minute, but the last-minute addition of an excellent glass of vintage port seemed to have helped loosen Alfred up. Especially after Miriam had asked a couple of leading questions about brake shoe manufacture, which veered dangerously close to discussing business.